The Bell Jar
by Zane's Girl- Jo
Summary: We live in a bell jar, locked away from the world. And maybe, just maybe, we need to do like Sylvia Plath, and take our fates into our own hands. Mary's POV.
1. Chapter 1

**The Bell Jar**

**Rifiuto: Non Miriena**

**Summary: We live in a bell jar, locked away from the world. And maybe, just maybe, we need to do like Sylvia Plath, and take our fates into our own hands. **

_"I've gone around for most of my life as in the rarefied atmosphere under a bell jar."_

_- Sylvia Plath (1932- 1963)_

"It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, I didn't know what I was doing in New York. I'm stupid about executions. The idea of being electrocuted makes me sick, and that's all there was to read about in the papers- goggle-eyed headlines staring up at me from every street corner and at the fusty, peanut-smelling mouth of every subway. It had nothing to do with me, but I couldn't help wondering what it would be like, being burned alive all along your nerves. I thought it must be the worst thing in the world...."

"Mary. Mary! Mary!" My head snapped up, to see Mom standing in front of me. "Put the book away, dinner's almost ready." Reluctantly, I bookmarked it, even though I'd started it today. Once the bookmark was between the pages, Mom snatched it out of my hands and read the back. When she was done, she tossed it on the coffee table, and turned to go into the kitchen. "I don't want you reading stuff like that, Mary. It'll give you ideas."

"But I have to read it for my English class!" I protested, climbing out of Dad's La-Z-Boy and following, as Lux sauntered into the kitchen, smelling of mints; she'd been smoking in the bathroom again, like usual. Bonnie and Therese were setting the table, and Cecilia was sitting on the island counter watching everyone, her wedding dress stained and the stitches on her wrists visible, even though her hands were in her lap. Tomorrow night, Mom and Dad were letting us throw a party, mainly so Ceel could mingle with boys for once in her young life, but we all benefited from it; the first time we'd be able to talk to boys outside of school. I don't think Ceel's excited about it, after all, she's the weird sister.

"I don't care, Mary. I don't want you reading things like that." Mom replied. "You won't read it, do you hear me? I forbid it."

"You can't forbid it! It's required!" I snapped, losing my temper. Seeing the plates sitting on the table, I grabbed them, and dashed them against the floor. The porcelain smashed against the tacky linoleuim floor, and I turned, stalking back into the living room, grabbing the book, and fleeing upstairs.

_"MARY!"_

I ignored her, slamming the door to the bedroom I shared with Bonnie, and collapsing on my bed, pulling the book out as I did so. Opening the book, I returned to Esther Greenwood's world, to the summer of 1953, when the Rosenbergs burned for spying, and the Korean war was just starting. Sighing, I started where I'd left off, intent on getting further; I'd even skip dinner if need be.

"New York was bad enough. By nine in the morning, the fake, country-wet freshness that had somehow seeped in overnight evaporated like the tail end of a sweet dream. Mirage-gray at the bottom of their granite canyons, the hot streets wavered in the sun, the car tops sizzled and glittered, and the dry, cindery dust blew into my eyes and down my throat. I kept hearing about the Rosenbergs over the radio and at the office till I couldn't get them out of my mind. It was like the first time I saw a cadaver. For week's afterward, the cadaver's head- or what there was left of it- floated up behind my eggs and bacon at breakfast and behind the face of Buddy Willard, who was responsible for my seeing it in the frst place, and pretty soon I felt as though I were carrying that cadaver's head around with me on a string, like some black, noseless balloon stinking of vinegar.

(I knew something was wrong with me that summer, because all I could think about was the Rosenbergs and how stupid I'd been to buy all those uncomfortable, expensive clothes, hanging limp as fish in my closet, and how all the little successes I'd totted up so happily at college fizzled to nothing outside the slick marble and plate-glass fronts along Madison Avenue.)"

I jumped, and turned to see Bonnie standing in front of my bed, her short blonde hair tucked behind her ears. I relaxed, sitting up and marking my page.

"Sorry." She whispered. Bonnie was always quiet, lost in her own little world.

"That's okay. Better you than Mom." I said, tossing my dark blonde hair behind my shoulder. She nodded.

"Dinner's ready." She whispered, turning and leaving. I nodded.

"Okay." I called, but Bonnie had already disappeared downstairs. Sighing, I turned back to my book, and then climbed off my bed, going to the door. Mom's words boiled my blood. She always made me angry, because she was always saying something to piss me off.

_"I don't want you reading stuff like that, Mary. It'll give you ideas."_

It wouldn't give me ideas. Mom was losing it. She was absolutely nuts. Well, she'd always been, but now...

Reading a book wouldn't give anyone ideas about anything.

A book wouldn't hurt anyone, they couldn't do anything but provide an escape from the hell people lived in. They were a way for me to run away without _actually_ running away. No harm, no foul. After all, what was that saying?

Oh yeah,

No harm ever came from reading a book.


	2. Chapter 2

**Rifiuto: Non Miriena**

Dinner was quiet, we said Grace and ate. Halfway through dinner, I got up, grabbing my plate.

"I'm done. Can I be excused?"

"Mary, sit down. You haven't finished your dinner." Mom replied. I bristled.

"I'm not hungry." I muttered through clenched teeth.

"I don't care. Sit back down and finish your plate." Slowly, I did, setting my plate back on the table, however, I didn't touch it after. After what felt like an eternity, but was actually a few minutes, I got up, grabbed my plate, went into the kitchen, threw the plate into the sink, and stormed upstairs. Once in my room, I collapsed on my bed, grabbed my book, and opened it to the page I'd ended on.

"I was supposed to be having the time of my life."

_So am I, but instead, I'm being ordered around like a puppy on a leash by my strict mother, who's fucking rules are ruining our lives._

"I was supposed to be the envy of thousands of other college girls just like me all over America who wanted nothing more than to be tripping about in those same size-seven patent leather shoes I'd bought in Bloomingdale's one lunch hour with a black patent leather belt and black patent leather pocketbook to match. And when my picture came out in the magazine the twelve of us were working on- drinking martinis in a skimpy, imitation silver-lame bodice stuck onto a big, fat cloud of white tulle, on some Starlight Roof, in the company of several anonymous young men with all-American bone structures hired or loaned for the occasion- everybody would think I must be having a real whirl.

Look what can happen in this country, they'd say. A girl lives in some out-of-the-way town for ninteen years, so poor she can't afford a magazine, and then she gets a scholarship to college and wins a prize here and a prize there and ends up steering New York like her own private car.

Only I wasn't steering anything, not even myself. I just bumped from my hotel to work and to parties and from parties ro my hotel and back to work like a numb trolleybus. I guess I should have been excited the way most of the other girl were, but I couldn't get myself to react. (I felt very still and very empty, the way the eye of a tornado must feel, moving dully along in the middle of the surrounding hullabaloo.)"

"Mom's not happy with you." I looked up, to see Bonnie slip into our room and close the door. Shrugging, I returned to my book.

"There were twelve of us at the hotel."

Suddenly, a hand covered the page I was on, and I looked up to see Bonnie sitting on my bed. Marking my page, she pulled the book out of my hands and read the back.

"_'The Bell Jar_?'" I nodded. "She's a writer? She must be really famous. Must be nice to be so well known." I took the book back, and sat up, placing the book in my lap.

"Yeah, must have been."

"Why do you say 'have been'?" I met her eyes.

"She died. Committed suicide. Stuck her head in the oven." Bonnie wrinkled her nose.

"Why?"

"I don't know. Maybe she was depressed. How am I supposed to know? She died in nineteen-sixty-three." Suddenly, the door opened, and Lux and Therese slipped in.

"What got into you, Mary?" I didn't say anything as Therese perched on the floor near the bed. Lux shut the door and leaned against it.

"Who cares? About time someone stood up to the bitch." She said, pulling out a cigarette.

"You can't smoke in here!" Bonnie cried. Rolling her eyes, Lux stuck the cigarette behind her ear. She slumped down the door, and pulled her knees to her chest.

"What are you reading?" I met my sister's eyes, and handed her the book after marking my place. After glancing at it quickly, she handed it back. "Class?" I nodded.

"Still, you shouldn't have acted that way." Bonnie told me, tucking a strand of her short hair behind her ear. I shrugged. Right then, I didn't care.

"Doesn't bother me any. She deserves to know how horrible she is."

"Mary!"

I rolled my eyes, and sat up, setting the book on the bed before pulling my knees to my chest.

"Well she does, Bonnie. I know you don't like to say anything mean about anybody, but I'm not as good hearted as you are. I can't stand Mom, and I think she needs to have the stick taken out of her ass."

Bonnie winced. "Still...."

"Oh quit being such a goody-goody. It's annoying." Lux said, pulling the cigarette from behind her ear and sticking it between her lips. Then, she climbed to her feet, went to the window, pushed it open, lit her cigarette, and leaned out the window, blowing smoke into the night air. Bonnie didn't say anything, just ducked her head, embarrassed.

"It's about time someone stood up to her." Lux said, returning to her cigarette. I shrugged, and looked up, when the door opened. We all tensed, before Cecilia slipped into the room, closing the door softly behind her.

"What do you want, Ceel?"

Silent, she came to my bed, and climbed on the other side. It was then that I felt her small arms go around my neck, before feeling her hot breath on my ear. She thought a moment, taking a deep breath before speaking.

"Thank you for sticking up to Mom, Mary."


	3. Chapter 3

**Rifiuto: Non Miriena**

I nodded. She hugged me closer before pulling away and sitting opposite me.

"Sure thing, Ceel."

We sat in silence, listening for footsteps on the stairs, and finally, hearing nothing, returned to our conversations. Lux continued to smoke, sticking her head out the window so she wouldn't be caught. Bonnie and Therese started up a new conversation, and I returned to my book. I didn't get very far; Ceel's spiritualist gaze kept making it hard for me to read, so I finally set the book down and stared back at her.

_"What?"_

She didn't say anything, just shrugged, and began to mess with the stitches on her wrists. I returned to my book, watching her out of the corner of my eye, before closing the book and reaching over.

"Don't do that, Ceel. You'll rip them out and then make them bleed." I gently seperated her hands, before returning to my book.

_"We had all won a fashion magazine contest, by writing essays and stories and poems and fashion blurbs, and as prizes they gave us jobs in New York for a month, expenses paid, and piles and piles of free bonuses, like ballet tickets and passes to fashion shows and hair stylings at a famous expensive salon and chances to meet successful people in the field of our desire and advice about what to do with our paticular complexions._

_I still have the makeup kit they gave me, fitted out for a person with brown eyes and brown hair: an oblong of brown mascara with a tiny brush, and a round basin of blue eye-shadow just big enough to dab the tip of your finger in, and three lipsticks ranging from red to pink, all cased in the same little gilt box with a mirror on one side. I also have a white plastic sunglasses case with colored shells and sequins and a green plastic starfish sewed onto it._

_I realized we kept piling up these presents because it was as good as free advertsing for the firms involved, but I couldn't be cynical. I got such a kick out of all those free gifts showering onto us. For a long time afterward, I hid them away, but later, when I was all right again, I brought them out, and I still have them around the house. I use the lipsticks now and then, and last week I cut the plastic starfish off the sunglasses case for the baby to play with._

_So there were twelve of us at the hotel, in the same wing on the same floor in single rooms, one after the other, and it reminded me of my dormitory at college. It wasn't a proper hotel- I mean a hotel where there are both men and women mixed about here and there on the same floor._

_This hotel- the Amazon- was for women only, and they were mostly girls my age with wealthy parents who wanted to be sure their daughters would be living where men couldn't get at them and decieve them; and they were all going to posh secretarial schools like Katy Gibbs, where they had to wear hats and stockings and gloves to class, or they had just graduated from places like Katy Gibbs and were secretaries to executives and junior executives and simply hanging around in New York waiting to get married to some career man or other."_

"What are you reading?" I looked up, to see Ceel watching me. Silent, I flipped the book closed, and showed her the cover. She read it, before taking it out of my hand and turning it over to read the back. "What's it about?" I shrugged.

"I don't know exactly, I haven't gotten that far yet, I'm only on Chapter one." I replied, taking the book back.

"These girls looked awfully bored to me. I saw them on the sunroof, yawning and painting their nails and trying to keep up their Bermuda tans, and they seemed bored as hell." Sensing someone was close by, I looked up, and gasped- Cecilia had moved until we were touching, reading silently over my shoulder.

"God Ceel! Don't do that!" I cried, dropping my book in shock. Then, I reached out, grabbed a fistful of her hair, and pulled. She cried out, and pulled away.

"Ow! Mary, don't!"

"Then don't sneak up on me, and I won't!" I snapped. The other three turned, watching us. As Cecilia climbed off my bed, Lux returned to the window, and Bonnie and Therese continued their conversation. Rubbing the back of her head where I'd yanked, Ceel left the room, pulling the door open quietly.

"My sister, the mean one, pulling my hair..." She muttered, disappearing down the hall. I rolled my eyes, and sprawled out on my stomach, returning to my book.

"That was mean, Mary."

"She deserved it, for scaring me." I replied.

"She wasn't doing anything wrong, just reading."

I raised an eyebrow.

"So? Just because she's reading, doesn't mean she has to sneak up on me, Bonnie." Therese shook her head, and got up, going to the door.

"You two can argue all you want, but I'm going to bed." I watched her go to the door, and slip out of the room. Then, Lux tossed the butt of her cigarette out the window, and followed.

"Night you guys."

Bonnie and I murmured a good night as she closed the door behind her. Once we were alone, Bonnie changed into her night gown, and I continued my reading. I had to have the first three chapters read by Monday, and since it was Friday, I had two whole days to get to three.

_"I talked with one of them, and she was bored with yachts and bored with flying around in airplanes and bored with skiing in Switzerland at Christmas and bored with the men in Brazil._

_Girls like that make me sick. I'm so jealous I can't speak. Nineteen years, and I hadn't been out of New England except for this trip to New York. It was my first big chance, but here I was, sitting back and letting it run through my fingers like so much water._

_I guess one of my troubles was Doreen._

_I'd never known a girl like Doreen before. Doreen came from a society girls' college down South and had bright white hair standing out in a cotton candy fluff round her head and blue eyes like transparent agate marbles, hard and polished and just about indestructible, and a mouth set in a sort of perpetual sneer. I don't mean a nasty sneer, but an amused, mysterious sneer, as if all the people around her were pretty silly and she could tell some good jokes on them if she wanted to._

_Doreen singled me out right away. She made me feel I was that much sharper than the others, and she really was wonderfully funny. She used to sit next to me at the conference table, and when the visiting celebrites were talking she'd whisper witty sarcastic remarks to me under her breath._

_Her college was so fashion consious, she said, that all the girls had pocketbook covers made out of the same material as their dresses, so that each time they changed their clothes they had a matching pocket book. This kind of detail impressed me. It suggested a whole life of marvelous, elaborate decadence that attracted me like a magnet._

_The only thing Doreen ever balled me out about was bothering to get my assignments in by a deadline._

_"What are you sweating over that for?" Doreen lounged on my bed in a peach silk dressing gown, filing her long, nicotine-yellow nails with an emery board while I typed up the draft of an interview with a best-selling novelist._

_That was another thing- the rest of us had starched cotton summer nighties and quilted housecoats, or maybe terry-cloth robes that doubled as beachcoats, but Doreen wore those full-length nylon and lace jobs you could half see through, and dressing gowns the color of skin, that stuck to her by some kind of electricity. She had an interesting, slightly sweaty smell that reminded me of those scallopy leaves of sweet fern you break off and crush between your fingers for the musk of them._

_"You know old Jay Cee won't give a damn if that story's in tomorrow or Monday." Doreen lit a cigarette and let the smoke flare slowly from her nostrils so her eyes were veiled. "Jay Cee's ugly as sin," Doreen went on cooly. "I bet that old husband of hers turns out all the lights before he gets near her or he'd puke otherwise."_

_Jay Cee was my boss, and I liked her a lot, in spite of what Doreen said. She wasn't one of the fashion magazine gushers with fake eyelashes and giddy jewelry. Jay Cee had brains, so her plug-ugly looks didn't seem to matter. She read a couple of languages and knew all the quality writers in the business._

_I tried to imagine Jay Cee out of her strict office suit and luncheon-duty hat, and in bed with her fat husband, but I just couldn't do it. I always had a terribly hard time trying to imagine people in bed together._

_Jay Cee wanted to teach me something, all the old ladies I ever knew wanted to teach me something, but I suddenly didn't think they had anything to teach me. I fitted the lid of my typewriter and clicked it shut._

_Doreen grinned. "Smart girl."_

_Somebody tapped at the door._

_"Who is it?" I didn't bother to get up."_

Just as I reached that line, a knock sounded on the door, and I sat up, closing the book and rushing to undress and pull my night gown on, before diving into bed. I'd gotten so caught up in the book, that I'd lost track of time. Once I was under the covers, I laid back, before realizing that the book was out in the open.

"Who is it?" I called, as I managed to grab the novel and shove it under my pillow just as Mom opened the door, with no greeting or warning.

"Are you both in?" Bonnie and I didn't say anything, just let her check us over before going to the door. "Good night girls."

"Night."

Once she was gone, I pulled the book out. Bonnie yawned.

"Put it away, Mary. You can read it tomorrow. It's late."

Grumbling, I did as told, yawning.


	4. Chapter 4

**Rifiuto: Non Miriena**

"Mary."

_"It's me, Betsy. Are you coming to the party?"_

_"I guess so." I still didn't go to the door._

_They imported Besty straight from Kansas with her bouncing blonde ponytail and Sweetheart-of-Sigma-Chi smile. I remember once the two of us were called over to the office of some blue-chinned TV producer in a pinstripe suite to see if we had any angles he could build up for a program, and Betsy started to tell about the male and female corn in Kansas. She got so excited about that damn corn even the producer had tears in his eyes, only he couldn't use any of it, unfortunately, he said._

_Later on, the Beauty Editor persuaded Betsy to cut her hair and made a cover girl out of her, and I still see her face now and then, smiling out of those "P.Q.'s wife wears B.H. Wragge" ads. _

_Betsy was always asking me to do things with her and the other girls as if she were trying to save me in some way. She never asked Doreen. In private, Doreen called her Pollyanna Cowgirl. _

_"Do you want to come in our cab?" Betsy said through the door._

_Doreen shook her head. _

_"That's all right, Betsy," I said. "I'm going with Doreen."_

_"Okay." I could hear Betsy padding off down the hall._

_"We'll just go till we get sick of it," Doreen told me, stubbing out her cigarette in the base of my bedside reading lamp, "then we'll go out on the town. Those parties they stage here remind me of the old dances in the school gym. Why do they always round up Yalies? They're so _stoo_pit!"_

_Buddy Willard went to Yale, but now I thought of it, what was wrong with him was that he was stupid. Oh, he'd managed to get good marks all right, and to have an affair with some awful waitress on the Cape by the name of Gladys, but he didn't have one speck of intuition. Doreen had intuition. Everything she said was like a secret voice speaking straight out of my own bones."_

I jumped, at the feel of a hand on my shoulder.

"God Luxie, don't do that!" I cried, grabbing the stitch in my chest.

"Sorry." She replied, collapsing on my bed next to me.

"That's okay. Where's Ceel?" Lux shrugged, and grabbed the book from my lap.

"God knows. Probably in the bathroom, taking another one of her fucking long marathon baths." She replied, opening the book and flipping through it. "What are you reading this for?"

"English."

She nodded, handed it back, and laid her head in my lap.

"Read to me, Mary. Please." I sighed, and laid back against the pillows, opening the book to where I'd left off.

_"We were stuck in the theater-hour rush. Our cab sat wedged in back of Betsy's cab and in front of a cab with four of the other girls, and nothing moved._

_Doreen looked terrific. She was wearing a strapless white lace dress zipped up over a snug corset affair that curved her in at the middle and bulged her out again spectacularly above and below, and her skin had a bronzy polish under the pale dusting powder. She smelled strong as a whole perfume store. _

_I wore a black shantung sheath that cost me forty dollars. It was part of a buying spree I had with some of my scholarship money when I heard I was one of the lucky ones going to New York. This dress was cut so queerly that I couldn't wear any sort of a bra under it, but that didn't matter much as I was skinny as a boy and barley rippled, and I liked feeling almost naked on the hot summer nights._

_The city had faded my tan, though. I looked yellow as a Chinaman. Ordinarily, I would have been nervous about my dress and my odd color, but being with Doreen made me forget my worries. I felt wise and cynical as hell._

_When the man in the blue lumber shirt and black chinos and tooled leather cowboy boots started to stroll over to us from under the striped awning of the bar where he'd been eyeing our cab, I couldn't have any illusions. I knew perfectly well he'd come for Doreen. He threaded his way out between the stopped cars and leaned engagingly on the sill of our open window._

_"And what, may I ask, are two nice girls like you doing all alone in a cab on a nice night like this?" _

_He had a big, wide, white toothpaste-ad smile._

_"We're on our way to a party," I blurted, since Doreen had gone suddenly dumb as a post and was fiddling in a blase way with her white lace pocketbook cover. _

_"That sounds boring," The man said. "Whyn't you both join me for a couple of drinks in that bar over there? I've some friends waiting as well." _

_He nodded in the direction of several informally dressed men slouching around under the awning. They had been following him with their eyes, and when he glanced back at them, they burst out laughing."_

Suddenly, the door opened, and Bonnie and Therese entered, Cecilia behind them. Therese carried her and Lux's bracelets, and a thing of Scotch tape. Slowly, Ceel collapsed on Bonnie's bed, and held out her hands.

"Ready Ceel?" Therese asked.


End file.
